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Reviewed by: Taylor Coonelly, Elementary School Librarian Title: The Miracle Forest
Author: Ellen Dee Davidson
Illustrator: Carolan Raleigh-Halsing
Publisher: 12 Willow
Year: 2024 Good for Grades: 3-7 Genre/Type of Book: Bilingual picture book
Content Warnings, or things that other School Librarians should be aware of: N/A Recommended for a school library: No Reason(s) for choosing the book:
Nominated for the CYBILS award for Elementary and Middle Grade nonfiction
If you were tasked by the publisher with writing a short quote for the back cover of this book, what would it be:
An empowering bilingual story about a man, his team, and their environmental dreams.
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Review:
An empowering bilingual story about a man, his team, and their environmental dreams. This is a dual English-Spanish picture book about Paolo Lugari. He lived in Colombia, and dreamed of a community where people and nature lived in harmony, even in places like the Llanos (the desert plains of eastern Colombia). Paolo believed that the desert lived in people's imaginations, and he searched for anyone who shared his vision and would help create this place. At first, small group joined Paolo and began to live on this land. The first problem they encountered was drinkable water, so they created a pump system to gather clean water, and built windmills to harness wind energy to supply water. They still needed to find plants that would grow in this area, providing shelter and food to those living there. As the community grew, Paolo and his team found solutions to nurture dying plants and make money from the trees without needing to tear them down. As the years went by, the Gaviotans created a beautiful tropical oasis in an area long thought to be uninhabitable. This book really focuses on the message of environmental sustainability and hope in creating communities that work with the land and preserve nature. In a time where humans are destroying so much of our natural world, this inspiring story shows us how we can work together to create change and work with nature instead of against it. This book is bilingual, which creates a wider audience for the text. This book definitely reads more as an upper elementary text, and my only qualm is that the book isn't engaging to students. While the message and story are really important, this book doesn't draw in students by it's cover or the illustration style (which is not to say it isn't well done).
Number of party hats:
For more information about this book, see the Publisher's Website